Day: October 15, 2018

Today, I demonstrated how to make bubble liquid and blow bubbles using a canning jar lid. I hope I showed it’s important to talk and move at the same time during a demonstration speech.

Now it’s time for you to demonstrate something for me. Using a plastic knife.

Yes, seriously.

Look, I have my reasons.

You can’t stab me with it. (Joking!)

You’ve probably never thought about a craft or something you can do with a plastic knife that doesn’t involve food.

Plastic knives are not expensive.

What’s really important is that you decide quickly:

What Are You Going to Do With a Plastic Knife?

Number 1 rule: it can’t have anything to do with food. No food. None.

Number 2 rule: You can’t hurt yourself or someone else with it. (No knife throwing.) (I don’t care that it is plastic.)

Number 3 rule: There is no number 3. I just made that up.

Your homework assignment is to create a speech presentation that you demonstrate using a plastic knife. You must record the speech using the headphones you were required to purchase at the beginning of the semester.

The speech you record does not have to include the actual demonstration. This is your practice of the speech, not the demonstration.

By breaking the demonstration speech into two parts – the speech presentation and the demonstration – you can practice each separately to make sure you can do both. You may find that during your demonstration speech, you stop talking because you’re concentrating on the task. We want to minimize that. That’s why I expect you to use multiple models of the project. When you get bogged down, you can switch to the next step.

You MUST DEMONSTRATE one step of the process. Pick the one that you can do easiest, or is the most interesting to the audience, or is the one that you can’t possibly screw up. You may bring a hot glue gun to use during the presentation.

On October 22, we will talk about how to manage your stage while you’re doing a demonstration. So get that speech written and into your head because you WILL NOT able to read it while doing this speech. You can use some notes written on the demonstration table, but don’t expect to be able to read your speech. You need to know what you’re going to say and what you’re going to do.

Just a reminder

If you need some ideas or reminders from the class, the notes I use to prepare for each class are on this website. You can see them by using the menu and selecting Speech Class Notes.